David Charters: Music of the streets is a noble calling

Entertainer Jimmy Edwards wearing a top hat, and his group of buskers entertaining crowds outside Wembley Empire Pool before the start of a charity show
March 1959

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My friend has scuffed the skin off many pavements on his long walk through seasons of tumult and sun - from the early days of salt-fish, shared water and tin baths to this age of instant burgers and those smart phones, which know more than is good for them.

And, inevitably, the creep of years has entered his being.

“I have been fitted with an ear trumpet,” he said, delivering the word ‘trumpet’ with a grin, recognising his new hearing aid was almost invisible and advanced enough for granite to hear the whispers of angels.

“Does it work?” I asked.

“Pardon,” he replied.

At first, I thought this was another triumphant shaft of Scouse wit. But then I realised he had not heard me.

So he made some adjustments behind his ear. “Ah that’s better. I can hear you now,” he said when the twiddling was done.

These are words your perambulating pensioner rarely hears from his wife, who is the mistress of diplomatic deafness, when she anticipates another rant from me against the modern world.

But my friend’s utterances are always eagerly anticipated. And soon he was master of the hearing aid, picking up all the sounds of spring. For he has a love of music.

But this never spread to rock and roll. His own baritone with tenor leanings reaches for songs from the great American musicals and the Celtic folk tradition.

Thus, he would not have taken to the trio busking classics from the 1950s and ‘60s, in the centre of Birkenhead, our crusty old pie of a town.

A bushy haired lady kept a steady rhythm on the drums for the two chaps in suits of funeral black with stove-pipe hats.

The guitarist was jolly and bearded while the double-bass player was of a sallower complexion, though he managed to twirl his instrument, before standing on it in the grand old style - winning applause and the tinkle of coins.

An enthusiastic crowd had gathered, one old chap dancing free style. All this gained envious glances from the nearby evangelists, whose leaflets asking, “Is There A God?”, were largely ignored.

Between Summer Time Blues and Good Golly Miss Molly, the double-bassist puffed slyly on an e-cigarette concealed in his inside jacket pocket.

Busking is a noble calling, like writing. You offer people something and then hope. They can, of course, switch off their hearing aids or turn to another page. But there’s always a chance they’ll like it.